Page 97 of Dose

The local reserve stands down.

Cascade keeps producing. Its shipments will continue to the children who cannot safely lose them. Tomorrow night, if no one finds the dormant access, its customer records will begin flowing to us.

By the terms we set, the operation succeeds.

Isla sits beside me with the secure drive locked between both hands.

Thirty miles pass before she speaks.

“I can’t calculate it.”

27

ISLA

The number will not hold still.

Nine facilities used my storage protocol. Seven used the sourcing change. Four used the side-chain modification.

Those figures are clean. Everything beneath them is not.

Children were transferred between sites. Some kept their subject codes and some were assigned new ones. Two facilities recycled codes after a subject was discharged. Population snapshots exist for certain months and disappear for entire years. Every time I construct a total, I find an overlap that makes it false.

The secure drive is locked between my hands. Theon drives with his eyes fixed on the road, giving me the silence I need and the proximity I cannot ask for.

“Not from those files,” he says.

I had not realized I spoke aloud.

“I can calculate exposure-months. I can build a range.” My voice sounds like it belongs in a laboratory report. “I can’t produce a unique count.”

“Then don’t pretend the data says something it doesn’t.”

A laugh escapes me, but it breaks before it becomes a sound. “That’s what I taught you?”

“Among other things.”

Texas passes beyond the window in strips of pale grass, scrub and hard blue sky.

The lower end of the range is in the hundreds. The upper end could reach into the thousands. Neither figure captures what the reports actually mean.

Faster onset meant less time to resist.

Better stability meant the compounds could survive poor storage and longer journeys.

Lower cost meant more doses, in more facilities, for longer.

I used to describe those results as improvements.

“You aren’t going to tell me none of it was my fault,” I say.

Theon’s hand tightens on the steering wheel. “No.”

I turn to look at him.

“The harm is real,” he says. “So is the fact that they took you as a child, moved you into Site Nine at thirteen and trained you to equate usefulness with safety. They controlled every condition under which you made those choices. I won’t erase either truth to make this easier.”

“I was good at it.”